There’s a question about time travel and being a fly on the wall at great moments in history that gets unceremoniously tossed around at cocktail parties, and answers vary greatly, from being in rooms where history was made to hearing your favorite band play during their prime. With Peter Jackson’s brilliant and emotional three-part Disney+ documentary, “The Beatles: Get Back,” we get a chance to be that proverbial fly during the waning of one of the most famous rock ’n’ roll bands in history.

There have been countless stories and rumors floating around for decades about the last days of The Beatles, but there’s nothing like seeing it all happen right in front of your eyes. Taken from nearly 60 hours of footage shot in January 1969, Jackson weaves together the story of the band, their egos and their love for their music and one another as they come together to create a live album/documentary/concert event set to air at the end of that month. Over the month, this changes to only the recording of the “Abbey Road” and “Let it Be” albums and what would be their final performance on the roof of Apple Studios.

The cheeky boys from Liverpool, fresh from creating their own Apple Studios and releasing the White Album — their first self-produced — meet at a vacuous Twickenham Studios where they have about three weeks to write, record and rehearse for this upcoming show they’ve agreed to do while filmmaker Michael Lindsay-Hogg guides a film crew to capture the band on tape.

The moment you see them all together you can tell things are already tense. John Lennon is inseparable from his girlfriend Yoko Ono and seems unenthusiastic about the project. Paul McCartney tries to both not be “the boss” while also trying to take complete control of the process. George Harrison tries to give his input while getting steamrolled, and Ringo Starr is … well, he’s Ringo.

It’s both heartbreaking to see their own egos breaking the band, but also endearing to see just how much they love each other. Like brothers, the Fab Four grew up together, and just like brothers, eventually figured out their own creative paths, which, unfortunately for The Beatles, didn’t include one another.

It’s heartbreaking, too, to see Harrison’s brilliance constantly get shot down, but satisfying to hear a later conversation between McCartney and Lennon that reveals they know they did wrong by him, and they vow to do better.

Finally, it’s heartbreaking to see everything play out and hear McCartney say they’ll play together when they’re old, and inspiring to see them create these iconic songs out of thin air.

By seeing everything happen in as close to real-time as we can get from a documentary like this, all of the rumors over what broke up the band fade to the background. It wasn’t Yoko, or studio pressure or the idea that they hated one another that broke up The Beatles: It was their individual creative drives and egos that did it. We see the emergence of songs that each member would go on to record in their solo careers, where they would thrive.

Jackson’s restoration of the film shot by Lindsay-Hogg’s crew, as well as over 100 hours of audio recording, is stellar, looking as though it could have been shot yesterday.

Spanning nearly eight hours, “Get Back” gives us an intimate look at the band — and we can be that fly on that wall listening to hits pour out like the copious amounts of beer, wine and Coca-Cola the maestros consume. We also learn something more about the band as a whole, and see as each of them realizes this is indeed the end of the road for The Beatles.

The only issue with the documentary comes, unfortunately, in the first part, which is just too long. In the first episode, we get a lay of the land and where the band is mentally and creatively, but it feels rudderless and not as tightly edited as it could have been.

The other two parts are pretty much flawless, leading up to the famous rooftop concert. Jackson manages to find the tension of the moment and mixes in the exhilaration we feel as an audience and can see on each face in the band, including “fifth Beatle” Billy Preston. It’s truly magical.

While we may not actually be in the room, Jackson has made every effort to make it feel as though we are. And for every Beatles fan, music lover or anyone who wants to see a part of history being made, “The Beatles: Get Back” is well worth the nearly eight hours of streaming.